hi,
of the main MB left - asus msi GB (so many have withered away soyo soltek aopen)
if i want to build a haswell fanless pc Is Gigabyte ultradurable 5 the best for say $100?

msi hi-c caps are too expensive at $300 and asus also sells $300. many GB UD5 can be had around $100 though.

2 oz copper. it's engineered for extreme oc'ing, but for silent pc why not run it fanless along with fanless psu and undervolted haswell and large heat pipe

Probably not. High end motherboards like this tend to have gimmicky things like this and features that most buyers won't need but buy anyway to give them bragging rights to people they're never even going to meet. Amazing marketing strategy. As a result the power consumption of the motherboard itself will be much higher and higher power consumption is bad for fanless operation.

Go for a standard level MicroATX or even MiniITX motherboard and consider H77 versus Z77. This will all give you lower power consumption so will get things close to fanless operation.

Asus, MSI, and Gigabyte all make decent boards. I like the heavier copper in the Gigabyte boards and opted to use one with this old build. In general, the more stuff on the board, the more power it'll use. So, if you go for a board marketed for overclocking, those extra VRM phases help to add more power consumed vs one with less VRM phases. Same thing with extra USB controllers, the second LAN NIC, etc. Take a look at the variance in power used in this mobo roundup.

As far as i have noticed, Haswell isn't widely spread right now. Nor have been mainboards with Haswell-Chipsets. There are no tests whatsoever i'm aware about.

So my question is: How are we (or anyone without the power to see into the future) supposed to know what will be "the best" board?

GB claim up to 60C cooler with UD3-4-5

yeah haswell not yet out. soon though.

i do think full atx is overkill. AFAIK though GB doesn't offer UD in mini-ITX

Heh - I completely missed that he was talking about Haswell. It won't be introduced until Computex in early June and I wouldn't touch a build until at least two-three months later.

We all know what to think about claims made bye the manufacturer. If we had believed, we all had Sabertooth and thermal take stuff and would have to use hearing protection to enjoy the advertised 'silence'. No test, no truth. Marketing is about lying to customers without being caught.

haswell might allow a fanless since some models are allegedly 10 watt and include graphics.

mini-itx is fine but i wonder about hard drive size 3.5".

mobile version is supposed to get down to 10W from 17W today...but don't expect that for desktop. In fact, the quad core variants are upped to 88W TDP - as they doubled the graphics processing units on the upper end. I'd guess the dual core desktops will come in at 60-66W. Where desktop Haswell will gain in energy efficiency is in idle power and the ability to pop in and out of deeper idle states faster.

i'm sure intel will offer a low power desktop version perhaps 15 watts? apple for one would want it.

for my needs micro-atx or even mini-itx is fine

The lowest power IVB desktop i3 is the 2.8GHz i3-3220T @ 35W. The only way a desktop model will approach 15W is if you underclock it to maybe 1.5GHz and undervolt it, too. Which is what Intel did in the mobile space with the 1.4GHz i3-3229Y.

hi thanks for replying

do you know if UEFI GB ASUS MSI allow for underclocking/undervolting?

correct me if i'm wrong but aren't apple mac desktops fanless?

All the desktop macs are fanned.

ok

I've tried boards from the big three. I'm finding Asus boards to be the best for fan management. Q-Fan is very good, and they work fine passively cooled, too.

MSI would be a close second.

um so why is gb 3rd? gb w/ud claims up to 60c cooler components

not a pressing issue since my current pc is fine and haswell sounds good

If you want fanless silence then low power stuff is important. Intel has been king in that department in the past, but now they will discontinue desktop motherboards. The Haswell boards will sadly be the last.

If this stuff was really that important then all of the workstation and server boards would have it. They don't.

Why would you use 3.5" on a mITX? I'd go with an mSATA SSD and a 2.5" 1TB if you needed bulk storage. Whole point of mITX (IMO) is to make things crazy small.